


Indulge Me

by cameronclaire



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Axel's Birthday, Broken Bones, Couch Cuddles, Eventual Smut, Grinding, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Massage, Multi, Office Romance, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Teasing, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:06:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26937100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cameronclaire/pseuds/cameronclaire
Summary: Breaking his leg skateboarding and spending half the day in the hospital were not particularly high up on Axel's birthday wish list. Back home, Axel is exhausted and Roxas' guilt is eating at him. Fortunately, Isa comes up with an unconventional solution to calm Roxas down and put Axel in better spirits—starting with a very thorough massage.
Relationships: Axel/Isa/Roxas (Kingdom Hearts), Isa/Roxas (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hm. Writer's block. I don't know if I'm going to keep going with this or not but I like the first half of it, so I wanted to share...

“I should call and tell them I can’t pick up the cake.” 

Isa tears his eyes away from _American Horror Story_ to give his boyfriend’s boyfriend another once-over. “What?”

A few minutes ago, Axel had hobbled his way into the kitchen to take a phone call from his mother, but neither Roxas nor Isa had unmuted the TV. They had found themselves grateful for the sudden, overwhelming silence and, for the first time all day, the distinct lack of humming, beeping medical equipment lurking thickly behind it.

Roxas’ hapless pacing brings him to a standstill in front of the screen, which Isa, seated on the sofa, has been staring at without really processing for the past ten minutes, partly because he despises _American Horror Story,_ and partly because looking anywhere else feels intrusive. 

Before this, Isa had always been careful not to visit Axel and Roxas’ apartment without prior notice. Usually before his arrival they will have long since cleared their battered coffee table, straightened the blanket over the charred and stained parts of the couch, taken down some of the more obscure and obscene artwork, swept, vacuumed, dusted twice... 

Today there are pieces of them scattered everywhere: plaid shirts and piercing backs, frisbees and ice cream sticks, nude sketches and sheet music, sand, cigarette butts, the lingering scent of aftershave, the spicy kind. Private details he’s not supposed to know about and can’t help but want to all the more for it. 

It’s not that Isa feels left out, precisely. He’s known Axel longer, been with him longer. It’s just that, after today, he genuinely wants to understand them better. Their relationship. Roxas.

Roxas has been on the creative team Isa oversees at Radiant for three years and has been dating Axel for one of them. Still, Isa doesn’t generally think much of Roxas at all, outside of whether or not he’s getting his graphic design projects done on time. The three hundred and fifty odd days Roxas and Axel have spent together have made Axel worlds happier, and that’s as far as Isa had figured he need concern himself.

But lately, today especially, he’s thought of little else besides the man stuck sitting beside him in the hospital lobby. Roxas, the small, blue-eyed, blond, angelic-looking thing that dresses like a frat boy at the office and a thug in his free time. Roxas with the friendly yet shockingly jaded personality that rivals Axel’s own and a general attitude toward life that seems to range from chill to aloof, despite Axel’s insistence that no one else embraces Carpe Diem with quite the same reckless abandon. 

But today as the medical procedures progressed and the hours ticked by, Isa had seen this approach torn from him, cast aside like a wet jacket after a sudden downpour. The day had left Roxas’ every movement raw, jittery, and pent up. And Isa had come to an abrupt understanding of the sheer intensity of Roxas’ feelings for Axel. 

Isa doesn’t know quite what to make of them, and at the moment, Isa doesn’t understand what Roxas is talking about, though he realizes it probably sounds more like he had tuned him out in favor of the silent TV. 

Roxas’ brows furrow, as Isa fixates on him instead of the screen. Isa wonders if Roxas thinks he’s judging him, judging the apartment, as if Isa would think the disarray was reflective of their relationship rather than adorably telling of their level of comfort together. 

Isa’s own place is immaculate, every surface dusted, every dish towel folded, but he has no such expectations for theirs. He _knows_ Axel, after all. The only things Axel has well-organized are his eyeliner collection and his Spotify playlists. 

Isa is more concerned about Axel himself. How he’s feeling: his leg, his spirit. How much he’s saying to his mother on the phone in the other room. What she’s saying back: about the accident, about Isa answering Roxas’ phone, about any of it. She knows her son has two boyfriends at this point, likes both of them, even, but _knowing, understanding,_ and _accepting_ are all proving to be wholly disparate beasts. Roxas, the youngest among them, might be nearing twenty-four, but to her they are ‘kids.’ ‘Wayward’ ‘Millennials’ going through a ‘phase.’ 

She tends to set Axel on edge and he doesn’t need it after the day he’s had. But Isa knows by now that he can’t exactly tell his boyfriend not to talk to his mother, so he sighs and slumps further back into the couch. He knows it’s not good for his posture, and his fitness coach, Terra, would cringe, but _damn it, it’s been a long day._

Roxas rips his hospital visitor’s name badge off the breast of his black hoodie and begins to shred it between his fingers as he glances about the apartment he and Axel share, noting the cluttered coffee table with its stacks of books and video games, boxes of take-out containers, stray art supplies, _and—_ Jesus _—is that lube?_

He can feel the heat crawling up his neck under Isa’s thoughtful scrutiny.

There was supposed to be time to clean up before Axel’s other boyfriend _—_ his jaw-droppingly perfect, model-esque boyfriend _—_ came over for dinner. But then, Axel and Roxas hadn’t expected an hour skateboarding in the park that morning to turn into Axel tripping off the half pipe and spending half a day in St. Valentine’s Hospital while the doctors tended to the fracture in Axel’s fibula. _So._

Roxas shoves the sticky paper strips into the pocket of his skinny jeans and tears his gaze from an old box of Lo Mein, still flagged with chopsticks. His eyes shift around the rest of the apartment, but there’s no better alternative. Combat boots and recycle bags litter the floor by the front door. The paintings on the back wall all suddenly seem tilted. The paint on the walls should be a lighter shade of gray. It smells like the cigarette habit Axel’s trying to kick and salty from the day it poured rain and Roxas hung his surfing gear out to dry across the back of the couch. 

Roxas rubs his eyes, runs his fingers through his bangs, kicks off his blood spattered Vans, because _Why the hell not at this point?_ and sighs. Isa is probably judging him, their place, the accident, and is just too well-mannered to say anything. 

Roxas wonders how their dinner this evening would have gone. _How it will go now._ He doesn’t have much of an appetite or even the willpower to make anything, let alone the vegan spread he’d told Axel he’d whip up for Isa’s sake. _And the cake…_

“I ordered Axel an ice cream cake. But I don’t want to leave to go get it,” Roxas replies belatedly, crossing and uncrossing his arms. He can feel Isa’s sharp green gaze on his skin like a day old burn pressed too hard. The idea of driving, or skateboarding, or even leaving the apartment sets chills from his shoulders to wrists, and he pulls the sleeves of his black hoodie down over his checkered bracelets and hands. “Not right now.”

Isa feels abruptly and strongly that what Roxas really needs at the moment is to be mummified in blankets and held fast. He wishes Axel would come back and take appropriate action. 

They can hear him laughing brightly in the other room, suggesting that the conversation with his mother is either going very well, or very poorly, though there is no telling yet which. 

“I don’t really eat sweets—” Isa begins evenly, hand rising to toy with the fringe of the blanket on the couch, wondering if he ought to go at the other man with the blanket himself. He’s unsure if it would be welcome.

“I know,” Roxas cuts him off, cringing inwardly as he does. He generally tries to match Isa’s unshakable maturity. He _tries_ to try anyway. But Axel had already warned Roxas this might be an issue, and he’s a little pissed Axel was right, especially after the day they had. 

“But it’s _Axel’s_ birthday, Saïx, so I figured you could suffer through some frosting—”  
  
“—but I could go pick it up,” Isa concludes, interrupting, as Roxas had, tone ending a little flatly. 

“Oh.” Roxas feels a rush of gratitude and immediately cringes at himself for expecting anything less from the other man Axel’s head-over-heels in love with. _Of course Saïx wouldn’t be selfish enough to think about his own dessert preferences at a time like this. Saïx is perfect._

Frankly, he’d been too mentally exhausted to check himself. Even though he knows he really should have, because, to be fair, Isa has been nothing but incredible all day. Roxas had called him from the ambulance, without a second thought. _Because who could be better in a crisis, and who could Axel want more, than Saïx?_

Isa had reacted with appropriate valiance, of course. He’d cancelled his plans to sit with them all day at the hospital, gotten them food and coffee, driven them home... Not to mention he’d sorted through all of Axel’s insurance and medical paperwork like it was nothing, made decisions with the doctors and planned future appointments. Meanwhile, Roxas held Axel’s hand, bit his lip, and tried not to tear up as Axel whispered reassurances to _him._

Isa’s lip pulls up in easy amusement, like he’s already well-acquainted with Roxas’ temper. 

Roxas hopes Axel hasn’t been telling stories and strives to make his tone more amenable, “No. That’s completely stu—I mean... He needs you here, too, obviously.” Roxas jerks his head back toward the other room where Axel is recounting a somehow already exaggerated anecdote about the size of a needle from just a few hours past. “You’ve been so on top of things. I mean, you did—everything really—at the hospital. You kept Axel calm, and I’ve been this hot fucking mess...” He shakes his head again, cringes harder.

“Psh.” Isa waves, dismissive, willing his own calm to diffuse into the anxious creature in front of him—for Roxas to realize the flaws in his logic. “He tried to be strong for you. You made him smile. Made him laugh. _That’s_ what he needed. The rest would have taken care of itself.” 

“No—”

“Yes,” Isa corrects with that hard, decisive tone he has. The one Roxas suspects got him promoted to management in the first place. Isa’s head falls back against the couch, eyes shutting and neck stretching in a way that strikes Roxas as strangely vulnerable. “I felt like a drill sergeant. Besides,” he grimaces, “I look like shit and feel worse.”

“You?” Roxas goes abruptly still, turns ninety degrees to look Isa dead in the eye. 

Isa is a bit startled by the sudden directness and by the color, ocean blue bleeding into a lighter shade casting them with surprising depth.

Isa had taken Roxas’ frantic phone call in the middle of spin class and immediately driven to meet them at the hospital. Isa, who Roxas has almost never seen outside of a button down and trousers, even outside of the office, arrived with his hair tossed in a messy bun, clad in his gray athletic tank with the lavender print reading ‘BUT DID YOU DIE’ (which had about killed Axel unto itself) and black sweatpants. 

He’d arrived faster than Roxas thought physically possible, showing a disregard for traffic laws Roxas had never imagined the strict middle manager could possess. Even now, smelling like stale sweat and wearing loose workout gear, with his muscles and cool confidence, he looks drop-dead sexy as far as Roxas is concerned.

And of course Roxas can’t get a certain _other_ image of Isa out of his head. An image that promptly awoke him at 5 AM that morning. An image sent accidentally-on-purpose to Axel’s phone _and_ Roxas’ _._ Confused by the early morning message, he’d pried the sleep from his eyes and squinted at his screen, slowly making out Isa in the dim blue half-light of early dawn, artfully sprawled across silken, midnight black sheets, wearing a starched white button down and absolutely nothing else. His skin with its golden undertones gleamed like he’d just stepped out of the shower. The button down was half undone to reveal his chiseled chest, and yet as his gaze travelled lower, Roxas saw it was absolutely not the most impressive, lickable part of the shot. 

“Annual birthday nude,” Axel had explained in a soft, half-asleep purr before pressing his lips into Roxas’ shoulder. _Like it was the most natural thing in the world._ “You like it?”

“Good Lord…” Roxas had replied, though it faded into a moan, as Axel’s palm slipped south from where it rested on his stomach. 

“Ah, so you _do_ like it.”

To Roxas, the morning feels a whole world away after hours of staring at stark white walls, smelling chemical cleaner, and seeing Axel’s body wrapped in a clinical blue robe and bruises the color of his teardrop facial tattoos. 

“You’ve never looked like shit a day in your life,” Roxas says now, staring back at Isa and fighting sudden cottonmouth. Isa’s brow dips, lips pursing, and Roxas’ voice softens, “and I would have been fucked without you to take care of all that stuff today.” 

Roxas remembers a nurse asking his name and relationship to the patient. His tongue had tied itself into a square knot, and Isa had had to respond _for him._

Isa straightens, mussing his hair, a few pastel blue strands slipping down his neck. He is thinking that Axel has obviously never shown Roxas photos of their haircuts in middle school. “Thank you, honey,” he says with surprising softness, stretching out a long leg and affectionately tapping Roxas’ bare knee with the toe of his trainer. 

Roxas’ shoulders slump, his eyes accidentally slipping to the contents of the coffee table again. _Fuck._ _Definitely lube._ His gaze skitters around and he gestures vaguely. “Our apartment, on the other hand, I’m sorry you have to see it like this… If Axel weren’t on so many pain meds he would be freaking the fuck out.” 

“Yes, well…” Isa glances around trying to find something kind to say about the place, and, not being able to come up with anything Roxas would find sincere, graciously fades off instead. _Cozy, but a bit of a shit-show._ His eyes land at last on a cluster of photo booth shots. “How about Xion?”

Roxas stops glancing over his shoulder toward the kitchen, where he can’t see Axel like he usually can, because he’s not pacing like he usually does. His thoughts are about to spiral back to all the things Axel can’t do now that he usually does when he processes what Isa said. “Huh?”

“Your ice cream cake.” Isa doesn’t seem quite able to say the word without distaste, like sugary confections wronged him in another life. He gestures vaguely. “Didn’t she say, _anything she could do_...?”

“Oh, shit. Yeah. I should text…” Roxas fumbles shakily through the pocket of his hoodie but comes up empty, glancing around in dazed horror. “Where’s my phone?”  
  
“ _Axel’s_ on your phone,” Isa replies, tone light, soothing, though Roxas still feels idiotic, as Isa slips out his own and starts tapping. 

It’s starting to occur to Isa that what Roxas has been thanking him for might be what he needs right now: someone to take care of things, someone to set his racing mind and body at ease. Isa is reminded dimly of their original plans for the evening before everything had bent off track. Dinner together, all three of them, at Axel’s insistence, and then afterward, straight to bed, at Axel’s insistence, _all three of them…_

“I’ll message her,” Isa says, toe gently slipping down Roxas’ calf and then retracting. “Don’t worry.”

“Thanks,” Roxas mumbles faintly, and sets to pacing again, shooting his thousandth anxious glance toward the kitchen. 

_“Roxas,”_ Isa continues more sharply, without glancing up, as he manages to locate Xion’s number in a company email. _It’s not protocol, but..._ “Come and sit down. I’ve never seen you like this.”

Roxas nods and stumbles forward, toward the couch, but just as abruptly rocks back on his heel. “I can’t.”

Isa quirks an eyebrow.

Roxas gives his head a slight shake, bangs flopping. “Axel won’t want me to get up for him, and he’ll end up straining his leg tryna be chivalrous.”

Isa scoffs and allows himself another glance around the room. The coffee table is too cluttered and the bean bag chair looks more like a punching bag that’s gone a hundred rounds too many.

Isa grimaces. “You may want to consider investing in more than just the one loveseat, sweetie.” 

Roxas cocks his head to the side, the ghost of a wry smile on his lips. “That would encourage people to come over.”

Isa has no doubt in his mind that this is a sentiment echoed from Axel’s own lips on more than one occasion. He rolls his eyes. “The two of you, I swear to God…” 

Roxas shrugs, which emphasizes how oversized his black hoodie is, but the glimmer of a smile makes a reappearance.  
  
“I highly doubt you have no visitors,” Isa continues pointedly, gesturing to the photos of Axel, Roxas, and Xion, and another shot of Roxas and Axel with Demyx and three friends Isa can never remember the names of. _They’re social creatures._ “What do you usually do, sit in his lap?”  
  
Roxas’ almost-smile gets crooked, his toes in their black sock pointing toward the dilapidated bean bag chair. “That or the floor.”

Isa sighs but uncrosses his legs and reaches a hand out, palm up, like a lord proposing a dance. “Alright then, darling. Come here.”

Roxas gives a short, pleased bark of laughter. “You serious?” 

_Honey. Sweetie. Darling._

It’s not that Roxas doesn’t like Isa. They’re friends. They hang out when Axel asks them to. They make small talk at the office. It’s just that at the office Isa is usually… cold. Cordial, distant. Some days Roxas assumes Isa just tolerates him, maybe even resents him. And then they’ll share a private smile or a joke or a text and Roxas will be unsure. He tells himself that’s just how Isa is, but he knows better because he’s _with Axel._

_But today…_

“Hm? Of course. Why not?” Isa’s voice is a weary rumble, though the slant of his lips betrays mild amusement. His fingers stretch out. “Let me help you relax.” 

Something in Roxas’ chest flutters and for the first time all day it isn’t with anxiety. 

He takes a half step forward before static prickles up his leg from his sock, and he pauses. His arms cross. _First, I get Axel’s leg broken, and now I’m driving Saïx up a wall._ “You don’t need to worry about me. Really.”  
  
Isa studies Roxas’ tense posture and sighs softly. He tosses his phone onto the couch cushion and spreads both arms wider. “Then help _me_ relax. I quite enjoy giving deep massages. It’s like having a human stress ball.”

Roxas’ eyes narrow and he laughs sharply. He doesn’t move for a long moment, locking eyes with Isa, a more subdued green than Axel’s, waiting for Isa’s warmth to drop off like a mask. 

_“Roxas,”_ Isa murmurs, arms open, still and steady. “It’s alright.” 

Roxas exhales and his shoulders fall back, losing some of their tension. “...Okay.” He shuffles forward and climbs onto the cushion beside Isa, and then Isa wraps his long pianist’s hands around Roxas’ waist and shifts the petite man up and onto this lap. 

Roxas weighs more than Isa anticipated, but Isa finds this nice, comfortingly solid. Likewise, Isa is stronger than Roxas expected, settling him as effortlessly as Axel would across his lap, his thighs toned and firm through his soft workout pants. 

Roxas leans back into Isa’s chest for a moment—broader and less bony than the one he’s used to—and inhales a scent like lavender and honey.

“Saïx—”

“We’re not at work, Roxas. You can call me by my first name.”

“I must seem really freaked out,” he mumbles, shutting his eyes, as Isa’s arms drape across his chest, bringing him closer, his warmth chasing away the twitchy static feeling that had taken up residence in Roxas’ nerves. “You’re being so nice to me…” 

“Indulge me,” Isa presses Roxas against his chest for a moment. Isa can’t really help himself. Axel’s boyfriend is so small and shaky and uncertain and fucking cute. “It’s rare I have the opportunity.”  
  
“You see me literally every day, _Mr. Saïx.”_ _  
_  
Isa’s brows arch. “I don’t particularly relish the thought of Larxene from H.R. breathing down my neck, do you?” 

This elicits another surprised laugh from Roxas. “Fuck no.” Roxas leans to the side, trying to meet Isa’s eyes and determine their sincerity. “Is that really all there is to it?” 

Isa nods, one hand absent-mindedly toying with the drawstring of Roxas’ hoodie, as he smiles with a fondness Roxas has only ever really seen him direct at Axel, excellent design projects, and still-steaming lattes. “You mean a lot to Axel and that means a lot to me,” Isa says it matter-of-factly, like it’s simple. “You didn’t know?” He gives the drawstring a quick tug that tenses the fabric at Roxas’ throat. “Thought I was just an asshole, did you?”

Roxas rubs at his neck, smoothing his hoodie, brow furrowing, tone low and teasing, _“Well…”_

“Careful.” Isa gives Roxas’ chest another teasing squeeze, and Roxas lets out another puff of disbelieving laughter.

“It’s probably for the best,” Isa replies, deadpan. “Otherwise I’d spoil you rotten.”

“Yeah, okay.” Roxas chuckles, brows rising, facing away from Isa again and resettling himself against his chest. “I’d like to see that.” 

Roxas tries to imagine Isa dropping coffee off at his desk or leaning too close over his back to view a project on his laptop or catching him squatting at the water cooler and complimenting his jeans. These impossible behaviors seem slightly less impossible as Isa’s hands drift up his chest. 

“If you’d like…”

Roxas leans slightly forward as the hands slide up to wrap his shoulders through his oversized hoodie. Isa tries to massage his thumbs through it, but the fabric is thick, and Isa and Roxas deduce at the same time that it needs to go.

Still Roxas is a little thrown when Isa just says, “Off.” 

He complies anyway, pulling his oversized hoodie over his head and shivering as his bare chest meets the apartment air, though it’s warmer than the hospital had been, and he hadn’t switched on the fan.  
  
“Oh…” Isa mutters, hands returning to bared shoulders. He had just assumed Roxas would be wearing a shirt under the hoodie like a regular human being, but evidently not. Roxas has a soft golden brown tan, and apparently Axel hadn’t been exaggerating his slight but muscular build, both of which he had credited to an unreasonable amount of time spent on a skate- or surfboard. Isa takes a moment to skim his fingertips over the anatomical heart tattooed over Roxas’ own, embellished with thick curling whirls of black ink. “Hello there.”

Roxas tenses again. “Hey,” he mumbles back. 

He feels Isa laughing near his ear before he murmurs, calm, chiding, superior, “Breathe, Roxas. Axel’s not _dead.”_

Roxas wants to laugh himself thinking of the caption on Isa’s workout tank, soft against his shoulder blades: BUT DID YOU DIE? But the worry is still gnawing just below his skin with cold teeth, so Roxas exhales, more a pouty huff than a healthy thing. 

“You’ve been blaming yourself all day,” Isa continues, setting to the actual massage now in earnest, fingers kneading into soft skin. Hot and precise, they expertly dig for knots of tension, working their way up and down Roxas’ neck in a neat pattern. “Enough is enough.” 

Roxas exhales sharply, his neck tilting, as Isa causes something near the base of his spine to pinch and then ease. “Because it’s my fault,” he says through teeth he’s trying not to grit. 

“No,” Isa pauses, grip softening for a moment, his exhale warm against Roxas’ neck, “it was an accident.”

“He told me before we left that he wasn’t feeling up to skateboarding, and I didn’t listen. I thought he was just trying to get me back in bed.” Roxas scoffs at the ceiling, half smiling. 

It’s such a pained expression that Isa’s sure Axel would smother him with kisses if he saw. Isa lifts fingers to card through Roxas’ hair and sets them back down instead. 

“So, I made him go, and he fucking fell off the fucking halfpipe. Now he’s shattered his leg and part of his knee. How was that not my fault?” Roxas grabs Isa’s wrist to keep his fingers from their soothing work and turns to meet his eyes, expression striking Isa as too intense for such a small person. Too emotional for someone usually so apathetic. 

“Because you’re forgetting one very important factor.”

Roxas can hear the smile in Isa’s voice but is reluctant to return it. “Yeah?”

“Axel is a dumbass, Roxas.”

Roxas had been expecting something profound. He laughs outright, the sound vibrating through Isa’s chest. “God. _Isa…_ ”

“I love him to death, but he is.” Isa resumes his massage, working his way down Roxas’ shoulders, carefully brushing over a bruise that was probably from surfing and another that was definitely from Axel’s incisors. “And if he weren’t,” Isa continues, “he would have _told you_ he half-dislocated his ankle _yesterday_ showing me how well he could jog _backwards_ and _that_ was the reason he tripped off the half pipe.”

Roxas chokes a bit, back going straight. “He _what?”_

“But he _didn’t_ tell you, because he’s a dumbass.” Isa’s fingers splay across Roxas’ shoulder blades for a moment, tracing bone. “A dumbass who doesn’t know how to say no to his pretty, blond boyfriend. So give yourself a break and relax.”

Roxas scoffs, dropping his head back onto Isa’s shoulder and covering his eyes with his elbow. “I’m going to fucking murder him.”

Isa’s arms wrap Roxas’ bare stomach, fingers gently kneading the muscles of his abdomen. “I’ll help you.”

Some of the tension slips out of Roxas’ core, and he relaxes, curving his back against Isa’s chest, and sighing. In the distance Axel laughs again, that overbright, loud laugh that either of them could identify from across a crowd of a hundred. 

“I’m not going to murder him,” Roxas mumbles into his arm. 

Isa rubs a few more light circles with his thumb. “I know.” Isa stares pointedly at the ceiling, because people are getting graphically murdered left and right on the TV screen, but he also doesn’t entirely trust his body not to react to the visual of Roxas shirtless in his lap, curling into his chest.

Roxas uncovers his face, but keeps his eyes shut, gesturing vaguely with his arm. “I keep thinking about how hard it’s going to be for him to do anything. You know? Even just get around, run errands, get dressed, shower… He’s going to be in so much pain… ” 

“Yes, there is no way around that,” Isa concedes, hands resting on Roxas’ sides. “Fortunately, he has two beautiful men at his beck and call to help him run errands, get dressed, _shower_ …” Isa squeezes lightly, and Roxas laughs then hums in concession. “Axel’s going to be like a king with a shiny new servant’s bell.” 

Roxas would find the words a bit severe if they didn’t sound quite so fond or quite so correct. 

“If anything,” Isa continues, prim as ever, “you ought to be feeling bad for _yourself.”_

Roxas cackles. “You’re terrible.” 

Isa hums back, like that’s not a point worth arguing. They stare at the TV for a long moment without really seeing it, Isa’s thumbs kneading Roxas’ lower back, fingertips idly brushing his abs.

Roxas hisses a bit, squirming, and at first Isa wonders if he’s reacting to someone getting gutted on screen, but as Roxas’ abdomen tenses, and Isa glances down, realizing his fingers are grazing a dark bruise just above Roxas’ belt.

“Sorry…” Isa mutters, a bit too swept away by the mental image of Roxas—quietly gasping, fingers tangling in the red mane tickling his chest as Axel’s teeth dug in, eyes squeezing shut—to muster any sincerity whatsoever.

Roxas smiles impishly, a quick flash of teeth and then gone. “’S fine.”

The episode ends and the screen pauses on a black silhouette, asking if they’re still watching, but they just stare at it, minds entirely elsewhere, but more or less the same elsewhere.

“Do you really think when the doctor said not to put weight on Axel’s leg he meant no sex?” Roxas asks finally.

Isa halts his massage, hands resting on the sides of the belt at Roxas’ hips. “We don’t usually talk about this.”

“Yeah, I know.” Roxas’ head rests back on Isa’s shoulder again, eyes meeting his keenly.

Isa finds himself frowning. He can feel his face getting sterner. “The doctor looked all three of us in the eye, in turn, and said, ‘No sex.’”

“Technically,” Roxas’ cheek dimples as he smirks ever-so-slightly, “he said, ‘You should probably wait for a while.’ And _only_ because Axel asked if it counted as 'rigorous physical activity _.'”_

Isa makes a sound somewhere between a scoff and a chuckle. _“Roxas,_ honey…” 

Roxas rolls his eyes, his lip in a pout. “I know, but… He wasn’t really, like, _specific._ I mean, if we don’t put any weight on his _leg...”_

Isa lifts an open palm, smile brief. “Because Axel is such a bastion of restraint and self-preservation.” His hand settles back on Roxas’ thigh. 

Roxas stares at Isa’s neatly manicured nails and the silver moon ring Axel had given him and tilts his head. “I guess that’s a fair point.”

“He has scrapes and bruises all over and he nearly broke his nose,” Isa persists, fingers scratching at a splotch of white paint caught in the denim on Roxas’ inner thigh. The paint has been there for months and does not give way. Isa sighs and smooths his hand over it, as if to hide it from sight. It’s debatable whether or not Isa’s aware of the spikes of heat radiating up Roxas’ leg to his groin from these touches, especially when he continues, “Certainly no birthday threesomes, at any rate.”

Saliva catches in Roxas’ throat and he chokes on it. “Isa…” he manages in a strained voice. He coughs a few times before he manages to clear his throat, one of Isa’s hands steadying his back, and the other rubbing soothingly at his thigh. 

Isa had texted Roxas something along these lines a few weeks ago, not long after Axel first suggested the evening, but Roxas had thought Isa had been _kidding._ Actually, more specifically, he thought Isa had been very, very drunk _and_ kidding. But here he sits behind him, stone cold sober.

“Yes, Roxas?”

 _“C’mon.”_ His breathing back under his control, Roxas twists around to meet Isa’s eye again. “Like I said in my text, just because he wanted all three of us to have dinner together, on his birthday, _does not_ mean he was going to ask us—”

Isa’s brows furrow, troubled, “I thought you—” He cuts himself off, smile indulgent. His massaging hand pauses at Roxas’ knee. “If you weren’t interested, you should have just said so.”

Isa’s blue-green eyes pin Roxas’, and his intense focus, strangely sensitive tone, sharp cheekbones, rock hard chest, over all buff—yet gorgeousness in general make Roxas feel like all his coughing awoke an entire colony of butterflies in his rib cage. 

“I didn’t say I wasn’t—” he’s mumbling before he has a chance to think of an intelligent, mature response. He just knows he has to correct Isa’s assumption immediately, “Of course, I’m completely down to, um…” Sex doesn’t usually make Roxas flush at this point in his life and relationship, but a flash of Isa nude this morning, his massive, tantalizing hard-on on full display, has a burning sensation fingering his cheekbones. “I just don’t think it would even occur to him to ask us to.”

“You don’t think so?” Isa’s lips curl, his gaze returning to the TV. “That’s cute.” 

Thrown by the sarcasm, and the finality Isa said it with, Roxas straightens up, frowning and looking toward the screen as well. 

A blood-spattered clown is laughing maniacally, and Roxas can practically hear the dim haunting anthem of circus music that’s being muted out. Roxas physically shivers.

“Jesus Christ,” Isa says as the camera zooms in on the clown’s face, where a spider’s crawling out from its eyeball, beside a painted tear not unlike Axel’s. “Please put something else on.” 

“Oh, thank God.” Roxas immediately seizes the remote from the left couch cushion. “I thought you’d never ask.” As Isa shifts his massage to Roxas’ lower back, Roxas switches to The Great British Bake Off and lets out a sigh of contentment. 


	2. Chapter 2

_You can’t have your cake and eat it too, sweetheart._

Axel can still hear his mother’s low smoker’s voice in his ear as he readjusts his crutches and swings his sore body out of the kitchen. She’d sounded far more concerned he’d end up single as a result of his supposedly jealous boyfriends spending time together than she did about the long-term health effects of the fractures in his bones _—_ but that was just typical Mom. 

Still, he’d be lying to himself if he tried to pretend her words didn’t make him a little paranoid sometimes. 

Isa and Roxas get along okay, sure, but Axel’s always had higher hopes for their relationship than that. He wonders if hoping they’ll bond is an unfair expectation, if wanting them to be best friends or possibly more than that is childish of him _—_ but he doesn’t think so. He can see the lines that should connect their complementary words and bodies like constellations. Tonight was supposed to be like that. 

But the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes fall off their skateboards and land on their asses. 

From the hallway, Axel can hear his boyfriends discussing a different kind of cake, and judging from the upbeat instrumentals, they are no longer watching _American Horror Story._ Axel supposes that’s fair. He had really only chosen the show in the hopes that something might finally freak Roxas out enough to make him shriek and cuddle into his chest, but, as usual, Roxas has taken a more pragmatic route. _Fuck ‘im._

“I want her to be my grandmother,” Roxas is insisting. 

“She’s out of the competition, though,” Isa argues mildly, “she did not temper that chocolate properly, she wrecked the technical, and we all know...” 

“Oh yeah, she is shit out of luck, but I mean, if she knitted me the ugliest sweater in the world, I would wear it.” 

“Ah. Understandable.”

There is a brief pause. After hours of stilted chit chat and radio silence, Axel’s relieved to hear them sounding more like their usual selves, and _together_ at that.

“Look at Mary’s face. I aspire to be able to insult people as politely as Mary.” 

“To be honest, you’re more of a Paul, Saïx…” 

“If I can’t be a Mary, Roxas, I’m going to be a fucking Paul.”

Roxas snorts. “That explains my last biannual eval…”

At least Axel _thinks_ they’re getting along. He pauses to readjust the towels under his arms and curse the gods of gravity. He has no idea what the hell Isa and Roxas are talking about. 

He can practically hear Isa’s side eye. “You had the highest eval on my team.”

There’s a pause wherein Axel expects Roxas is reteaching his jaw how to close. “...No shit?”

“But if you wish to further discuss your scores and areas for improvement, I’ll set aside a time next…” Isa slips into his business tone as abruptly as he slips out of it, “Oh, no.”

“Oh, damn,” Roxas echoes with equal horror. “He didn’t leave that ice cream in the freezer long enough.” 

“It’s going to melt all over his dignity.”

Roxas groans. “Put that shit back in the freezer, Paolo!” 

“I expected so much more from you, Paolo.” 

A pillow hits the TV and tumbles to the floor, then Isa and Roxas halt their commentary at the unsteady clomp of Axel’s crutches bumping their way across the creaky hallway floorboards.

“Sorry, guys,” Axel calls as he hobbles, “hope you didn’t miss me too much.” He tries to sound like his usual animated self but there is an obvious weariness behind it, accentuated by each staccato thump where the rubber end of his crutch hits the floorboards. “Mom wanted to give me birthday wishes and ask me why Roxas hasn’t met a nice girl to replace me with yet.” There’s a taste in Axel’s mouth like he’s bitten into a raw lemon. 

“I’ll get right on that,” Roxas teases mildly, reclining back into Isa, ankles crossing. 

“She’s given up on you completely, Ize, but, Roxas, Mom saw that photo of you and your cousin Naminé on Facebook and decided…” Axel lets his stale-feeling wry smile slip. “Well, never mind.” He’s too tired to piss Roxas off and then win him back at the moment. 

He’s hanging in the living room door frame, trying to collect himself for a moment, because they both have a sixth sense for knowing when he’s feeling like shit, but he can’t muster a real smile and he wonders why he’s bothering. _They’ll understand._

“Think we oughta just call it a night, guys, I’m fucking exhausted, and honestly...” Axel’s light tone has begun to fade off entirely as he takes a few more hesitant steps forward and looks up from directing his crutches for a moment. 

Axel stops dead, opens his mouth to say something, closes it, and shakes his head a little bit before he tries again, softer, “Oh, if Mom could see you now.” Axel’s electric green eyes catch the light, as he watches them instead of his step and fumbles the rest of the way to the futon. His elbow collides with a side table with a bang that makes his boyfriends wince, and leaves his arm vibrating with a hot jolt that tells Axel his pain meds are starting to wear off. 

“Don’t let her get to you,” Isa says, one arm unwrapping from where it’s settled on Roxas’ chest to shift the phone and remote from the cushion beside him to the table. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Roxas adds, as Isa’s arm settles back around him. 

“No, I can see that.” Axel’s lip twitches as he sets his crutches against the couch’s arm, hops between the couch and the coffee table, and falls into the cushions, reclining back with half his usual, catlike grace, which, Roxas thinks, is still fairly impressive, considering. 

Axel cocks his head to better inhale the sight of them: Roxas, worlds calmer than the last time Axel had laid eyes on him, snuggled docilely against Isa. Isa, whose arms wrap him snugly with a confident familiarity Axel wasn’t aware existed between the two of them. _Shirtless._ Axel would pay money to see how that had happened. Unexpected warmth floods his bruised chest. “Cozy, are we?” he purrs.

“Actually,” Isa’s eyes meet his and narrow, “he’s a yarn ball of stress knots,” he begins, continuing over Roxas’ almost immediate objections, “Please reassure him that you are not the pinnacle of human suffering.”

Roxas gazes at Axel unconvinced. Axel’s own clothes had been ripped, bloodied, and/or cut off of him, so he’s wearing a spare _Radiant Volunteers_ shirt from Isa’s gym bag that hangs loosely on his strong but lean frame and basketball shorts from the hospital lost-and-found that are several inches too short for his mile-long legs. His arms are candy striped with bandages and bruises every few inches across, and a long slash of medical tape crosses his cheek from where he’d rolled into a small but sharp rock. The violet, inverted teardrop tattoos beneath his eyes compete with actual bruised smudges. 

_Maybe not the pinnacle of human suffering,_ Roxas thinks, _but probably, like, their intern._

“Looks like you have the situation in hand,” Axel teases Isa as Roxas inspects him. 

But then Roxas clears his throat, asks softly, “How bad does it hurt?” and Axel immediately feels like he’s been stabbed in the chest with a large piece of glass, emotionally speaking. 

“Oh, no, I’m high as a kite, Roxas, babe,” Axel lies fluidly, his head settling back into the cushion, and his eyes closing to better assess his condition. His mind swims with white light, his extremities have begun to ache with just a touch of numbness lingering on the edges. “I feel no pain. You could probably light me on fire and it would tickle.” 

Roxas does not find this particularly reassuring. 

One of Axel’s eyes winks open, his lip quirking up in a fresh smirk that winds up half-wince. “And I might also be hallucinating, because it _looks_ like my boyfriends are _cuddling_.”

Roxas frowns as Axel’s already lilting voice climbs higher, mocking. He braces his hand against Isa’s shoulder. “If you don’t like it, I’ll get up.” 

This only causes Isa’s grip on Roxas’ chest to tighten, his resolve unbending, “Don’t be ridiculous…” 

“Whoa, whoa.” Axel’s hands raise, and Roxas and Isa turn their tense stares toward him instead, the sizzling heat in them evaporating. Axel blinks, tired, slightly dazed, though Roxas feels like there’s a catch to the way that he smiles. “Who says I don’t _like it,_ Roxas?” 

“I… Your face. Your… tone,” Roxas argues, confused, not yet convinced enough to lean back into Isa, scanning Axel’s face again. 

Axel’s chill about a lot of things, but Roxas and other guys are not one of them. Axel is already a hell of a lot more affectionate than Roxas ever anticipated himself wanting in a relationship, though Roxas quickly found himself loving, craving, _needing_ the ceaseless attention and physical contact, more so than he’s willing to admit to anyone except maybe the likes of his best friend Xion. 

But, when someone like, say, his high school ex-boyfriend Hayner is around, Roxas spends most of the evening tucked against Axel’s chest, and the rest of it with Axel’s hands in his front or back pockets. And they hang out with Hayner at least once a _week._

Roxas is not even sure Axel’s conscious of these small acts of possessiveness. He would have said something by now if Axel weren’t obviously working so damn hard to befriend Hayner otherwise. Axel always makes a point of asking about his work as a mechanic, lets Hayner school him talking motorcycle shop talk, and even started keeping track of blitzball scores to keep up with his conversations with Roxas. 

Roxas would have said something by now, except, Hayner _can_ be a bit too friendly, Hayner _is_ his ex, and deep down, Roxas finds the subconscious, jealous handsy-ness kind of hot. 

But this is a different situation, and Roxas has to admit to himself there’s no narrow threat in the way Axel’s watching them tonight. 

“My _tone?”_ Axel tries not to smirk too broadly. He’s purely relieved to see that wrapped in Isa’s firm, beefy arms, Roxas has stopped the outright shivering he’d been doing curled into Axel’s side on the drive home from the hospital.

Isa tsks his disapproval at their trite back and forth, and with artful strokes of his fingers along Roxas’ abs eases him back against him. 

“Fine then,” Roxas goads, relaxing into Isa’s attentive hands. Roxas makes a soft, unintentional, comfortable noise that sends a flare of heat up Axel’s neck and down below his basketball shorts. Isa shifts his legs slightly beneath Roxas on a slow exhale. 

Axel’s hands gingerly wrap his own calf, and with a grunt, he hefts his injured leg haphazardly onto the coffee table, upsetting an empty Coke can, which rolls off with a tinny rattle. “It’s nice to see you both so relaxed after all the damn waiting room chairs...” he continues, straightening up, one elbow landing on the arm of the loveseat to prop his head on.  
  
Isa’s chin jerks down as he meets Axel’s eye and reaches across the mere foot or so of space between them with a gentle hand to rub Axel’s shoulder, “Is that your way of saying ‘Thank you’ for putting up with your recklessness, darling?”

“Hm,” Axel shuts his eyes, pretending to consider, but can’t help but squint them open again in order to better soak in their glares. “Yeah. Guess so.” 

“Isa said you hurt your ankle _yesterday_ , _”_ Roxas follows up, his blue glower hard to look at, like when the sun hits the ocean and burns the eyes. Isa’s is cooler, more regal, but still present.

Axel sighs. _Fuck, so Isa’d told him._ “Did I forget to mention that?”

Isa snorts. 

“Yeah.” Roxas prods Axel’s thigh with his foot, though Axel notices it’s a lighter nudge than usual, like Roxas is worried he’ll hit a bruise. _The prickly little softie._ “Which was a dick move.”

“My ankle was feeling better-ish at the time.” Axel catches Roxas’ black sock in his hand, gives his foot a playful squeeze and then pushes his leg back toward Isa. “Not to mention, when you talk about the skatepark you light up like you just got l _—_ ”  
  
_“Axel_.”  
  
“...Paid.” Axel’s grin is pleased if still a little thinned by tiredness. “I figured if we did what you wanted in the morning, we could do what I wanted in the afternoon, but… Kind of stupid of me, huh?”

Isa catches Roxas’ ankle in his hand. “Yes.”

Axel’s eyes roll up to the ceiling. “Shut up, Isa.” 

“Oh, very impressive comeback.”

Roxas settles his leg back onto Isa’s and scoffs, though there’s no frustration left in it. His brows lift. He smiles, coos, “You’re kinda lucky you’re pretty.” 

Axel’s hand traces the bandages on his opposite arm, his head tilting in thought. “Pretty, huh? You dig scars, Roxas?”

Isa’s fingers softly pass over the violet imprint beside Roxas’ navel. “From what I can tell he prefers bruises…” 

Roxas gasps airily, practically growls, _“Hey…”_ and swats Isa’s hand away.

Axel notes that apparently his dick has not been informed about the pain meds or the sex ban, because it twitches, intrigued. 

“Don’t think I haven’t seen what your claws can do,” Roxas counters evenly. 

Isa may be his boss, but A.) he started it, and B.) Roxas isn’t about to let him get away with teasing him when he sees the telltale pink and red lines spanning Axel’s shoulders and thighs on a regular basis.

Isa chuckles softly, running his nails lightly across Roxas’ chest, and reveling in the spasm as he shivers against his chest and only mostly manages to swallow down the soft _‘ah’_ that rises up his throat. 

“You haven’t seen anything.”

Axel can only assume the _yet_ his brain is super-imposing on the end of that statement is the product of his own fantasy delusions and not actually in Isa’s tone or the way he catches Roxas’ eye, as Roxas presses Isa’s hand away for just a moment before Isa settles it back on his side _—_ as Isa chuckles and Roxas grumbles, “Jesus… maybe someone _should_ call H.R. _”_

Axel’s staring outright at this point, smiling, Cheshire-like again, though it hurts, and telling himself on repeat that they’re just teasing each other. Just being friendly. That this is what he’s wanted. He doesn’t believe himself, though. Another flash of heat pricks every inch of Axel and his dick gets a little firmer with every passing second looking at Roxas pinned against Isa’s chest, melting into his every touch. 

_So close but not close enough._ He halts that train of thought. 

_This has never been an issue before. They’re usually five feet apart and business casual and shit._ Right now, all he can think about is what the pair of them could be doing in this position, _with just a few quick readjustments to their hips and a lot less clothing…_

Axel coughs to break the tension, as Roxas flattens Isa’s other hand against the fine golden hair in the center of his bare stomach. “Fuck.” 

They both turn to stare at him. Roxas looks curious, if a bit confused, and Isa’s lip tilts up so faintly Axel’s half convinced he’s imagining it. 

Axel closes his eyes again. “I’m going to need you to go back to talking about baking, before I need some assistance getting a very cold shower.” Axel winks one lid open to watch Roxas tense.

Axel expects some kind of chastisement from Isa as well, but his eyes just dart down to Roxas’ with that bizarre new familiarity. “I told you.” 

Roxas makes a small noncommittal sound, and glances back toward Axel, who has returned to openly staring.

“You… don’t want me to move…?” Roxas thinks of the night last week when Axel, reeking of tequila, had kissed his way up his throat right in front of Hayner, and once he was sure Hayner was watching, tried to sink his teeth in, burning Roxas’ skin with salt and heat. 

Then again, it would be _—_ should be? _—_ insane for Axel to feel any kind of envy toward _Isa. Isa is completely his._ Isa’s been with Axel since the days of high school locker posters, friendship bracelets, and Caprisun juice pouches _._

Axel’s hand flutters vaguely, the rest of him still settled back, artfully casual. “I’m just trying to decide how I feel about the two of you snuggled up and _conspiring.”_

Isa hums, reaching out again to stroke two fingers down Axel’s jaw. “Trying to decide? Your staring would suggest otherwise.” Blue-green eyes flit from Axel’s tensed jaw to the beginnings of a bulge in his overly tight shorts and back up again, smile curling. “I thought you were _exhausted_.”

Axel’s well aware that he’s been watching Isa’s large hand spanning Roxas’ stomach with a shameful intensity. He pries his gaze up, back to theirs and musters a smile which he hopes will charm them though it stretches one of his bandages, and stings a bit. “If I weren’t exhausted, I would be doing a lot more than staring.” He lifts a scraped and bandaged hand and presses it briefly to where Roxas’ thigh meets Isa’s, and teases, “You have no idea how many of my fantasies start out like this.”

Roxas tries to inhale and exhale at the same time and chokes out a _“What?”_ followed closely by a _“Really?”_

Isa powers the TV down, and Roxas’ gold brows arch below his bangs. 

“Fantasies?” Isa echoes with a pointed tone that might have come off as chastising if Axel didn’t know him well enough, or see his hand creep just a fraction lower down Roxas’ bare abs. “Do tell.”

Refusing to be the only one flustered, Roxas shifts forward slightly, tilts his head. “Yeah. Like how, Axel?” 

“Oh. _Mm._ Ya know…” Feeling caught between a rock and a hard place in an increasingly literal sense, Axel rubs the back of his neck and gestures to them in general: a Greek god in workout gear with a slight, tattooed punk in his lap. 

_In his lap._ Axel tries to fight the part of his mind that’s mentally erasing their clothing from the picture in order to come up with a more coherent response. He is not successful. He wants to see them _skin on skin..._

“ _Un ménage à trois?_ ” Isa offers in neatly accented French with the sort of triumphant smile that Roxas expects he wore when Xemnas finally let him fire Xigbar last month. 

_“Saïx…”_ Roxas hisses and digs his elbow into Isa’s rib in warning, which Isa does not even seem to register, possibly due to his sheer muscle mass.

“Isa! _No,”_ Axel sounds somewhat scandalized, his eyes going comically wide. He’s definitely pushing his teasing too far, now. He blames the painkillers. He half expects Roxas to leap off Isa’s lap or backhand him, or at least to yell, but Roxas stays calmly settled as if unaware of Isa’s massaging fingertips beginning to skim a couple inches below the waistband of Roxas’ skinny jeans.

 _It’s like Isa’s touch has sedated him._ Axel supposes that this is not an unreasonable response. _It’s rare a massage from Isa doesn’t lead to sex in one form or another._

_Wait._

Axel’s brows furrow, which pinches his faintly bruised nose. He chances a glance to Isa, who nods, almost imperceptibly, although, in all fairness, that could _also_ be the blur of the painkillers.

“Okay. What, then?” Roxas asks, locking eyes with Axel. 

“Sometimes…” Reassured, Axel’s voice drops into that low growl Roxas likes as he leans forward. One brow lifts as his smile slinks back out, and that at least is still gorgeously intact. “I fantasize about you straddling each other, kissing, licking, making out a little…”

“Naked,” Isa tacks on. He pauses his massage of Roxas’ stomach, his hand landing so casually on Roxas’ belt buckle it looks like an accident. 

Roxas is too busy tilting his head to the side to gauge Axel’s reaction to retaliate. His lip juts out, the tiny silver ring pierced through it a faint flash of light. _“Naked?”_ The pit of Roxas’ stomach seems to ignite, heat pulsing through his veins, burning up his neck, and down just below where Isa’s hand rests. 

While Axel usually prides himself in his ability to flirt Roxas into most anything, this is uncharted territory, and he finds his brain fogged. _“Uh…_ no?”

Roxas draws his arms to his chest and leans defiantly away from Isa. He needs to think without being fucking caressed. “Isa seems a lot more familiar with this fantasy than I do.”

Isa’s voice catches in his throat, tongue running across the roof of his mouth, thumb running across the metal buckle latch. “Ah _—_ ”

Axel feels the glass shard in his chest again, pushing, twisting. “C’mon, Roxas. I didn’t think you’d want to hear it. You’re _—_ ” 

_Sensitive. Delicate. Gooey. Self-conscious. Deep down past the strength and bravery. Past the clothes and the confident posturing and the attitude. You’re everything you try so hard not to come off as._

_Not to mention you’re his_ employee…

None of the explanations drifting, smoke-like, through Axel’s mind seem like anything Roxas would want to hear, and Axel ends up stammering a string of meaningless syllables.

“You’ve never said you wanted, I mean, you didn’t even _ask_ me if I _—_ ” Roxas continues over him, with a coolness Axel’s unsure whether to call fury or just being thrown off guard. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

 _“_ Dear. _Roxas._ Hard as it is to believe, _”_ Isa sets the pad of his finger over Roxas’ bottom lip, halting his response, and they make tense eye contact, “I’ve been known to,” Roxas might be imagining the way Isa’s finger tugs at his lip, just before it lifts, but he doesn’t think he is, “ _intimidate_ people. Axel didn’t want to put you under any unwanted pressure.” 

Isa’s hand presses down emphatically on Roxas’ belt buckle, the friction creating a split second of mental fog that passes into a kind of clarity, as Roxas focuses all his energy into not bucking up into his boss’s palm. Axel does not miss the strain in the set of Roxas’ jaw. 

Isa smiles, soft, melancholy. “I can be a bit... much.”

Roxas exhales through his nose, and then nudges Isa’s arms which release him. He begins to shift down Isa’s lap. He turns his gaze back to Axel and it feels sharp again. Blue shards of glass like a church window shattered. “You thought I was afraid of him?”

“No,” Axel strains against the lump in his throat, his usual suave mixing with a whine, “I don’t know. Roxas, please. Don’t be mad.” Axel’s head throbs at the sudden shift in mood, his leg throbs with dull pain, and his cock throbs its objection to Roxas leaving Isa’s lap at all. 

“The last thing I wanted was to make you uncomfortable,” Axel says, tries to, “I just didn’t know how to explain. You’re my soulmate, and Isa’s a piece of me, so you and Isa is just an extension of…” He lifts his thumb to rub at the starburst of pain between his eyes, his tongue carrying on without him, “Fuck it, I don’t know what I’m saying.” White crystals of light flicker at the edges of his vision before he pries his eyes back open. “I am real fucked up right now.” He stretches out his hands to catch both of theirs and they let him, both gripping back, which sends a brief spike of heat to combat the sudden trickle of ice coating his spine. 

“You’re both everything to me,” Axel finds himself going on, against his better judgement, glancing between troubled blue eyes and calm, almost pitying, pale, slightly greener ones, “and you’re so fucking gorgeous, sometimes I can’t help but think it would be really hot if... I know I’m the luckiest prick alive, and I don’t deserve either of… ugh.” Axel halts his pathetic speech with a dismissive flick of his own hand, as Roxas continues to shift his body toward Isa’s knees like he’s about to stand up and take off. “Roxas. _Roxas._ Baby, where you going?” 

Roxas runs through Axel’s words in his head, and Axel seems to think he’s not making any sense, but the desperation he’s wringing both of their hands with fills in the spaces his coherency can’t reach. And for the first time, after today, seeing this other side of Isa, seeing Axel tongue-tied trying to explain what Isa insisted only made obvious fucking sense, Roxas feels like he gets it. What’s more, he knows what he can do to make Axel ecstatically happy after a day of stitches and medical tape. 

Roxas just has to decide if it’s what _he_ wants to do. He glances up to Isa who stops looking at Axel like Axel makes the sun rise and turns the gaze down to him, with the same infinite patience and restraint Roxas has seen him use in the communal kitchen teaching Demyx to use the espresso maker, his usual forcefulness set carelessly aside like a prop and replaced with soft, easy confidence. 

He thinks again how Isa had told the nurse Roxas’ name today. _“This is Axel’s boyfriend, Roxas.”_ He could have made things simpler. He could have dismissed their relationship. He could have said Axel’s friend, brother, cousin, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t even hesitated. Axel wouldn’t have wanted him to. Isa hadn’t wanted to. 

Roxas swings his legs up, feet resting between the pair of them, Isa’s arm rising to support his lower back. 

Axel’s heart stops going altogether when he realizes Roxas is grinning. He recognizes the slant of it. 

“Roxas?”

“I told you,” Roxas leans forward until Axel can feel the heat of his breath, pauses and then kisses Axel’s nose. “I’m not going anywhere. It’s still your birthday, right?” 

Axel exhales, crosses his arms, cocks an eyebrow, cut lip jutting out. “Um. Yeah…? Last I checked.”

Roxas nods, holding his gaze. “You deserve to have a not shitty rest of your birthday.” 

“Okay, buddy,” Axel’s nose scrunches though he’s leaned back, and Roxas is starting to wonder if it’s because it doesn’t hurt so much, rather than because it makes him look cool and relaxed. “So, what did you have in mind?”

“Shh…” Roxas gives another quick glimmer of a grin, and Axel pantomimes locking his lips though it makes Isa roll his eyes. “Just watch.” 

Roxas shifts one leg back across Isa’s lap and repositions himself until they face each other. Their eyes meet, Isa again taken with the starburst of light blue in Roxas’ up close. His lip tilts up at the determination he finds there. 

“Boo,” Isa murmurs, tone as calm and demure as ever, face smooth and impassive, like this was an inevitably he had long ago divined. 

Roxas rests his hands on Isa’s broad shoulders. “I’ve never been _afraid_ of you.”

“No. I know.” Isa’s smirk broadens, his hands returning to feel out Roxas’ ribs. “You just thought I was a resentful, bitter asshole who didn’t _like_ you.” He squeezes just above Roxas’ hips.

Roxas leans forward, wincing slightly. “Not exactly how I woulda put it.”

“Close enough, I think,” Isa’s words are just breaths now. 

Axel leans forward, opening his mouth to intervene but finds himself silently gasping at a bruise in his chest and settling back instead, feeling himself tense though Roxas doesn’t seem to be.

Isa’s smile doesn’t falter or sharpen, and Axel can tell he’s only playing at hurt. Isa’s thumbs press into Roxas’ sides more softly. “It’s alright. Nothing I wouldn’t be glad to rectify. Twice over, if need be. _After_ office hours, of course.”

Axel snorts softly, pushing aside the mental image of Isa rising from a seat pulled up to Roxas’ desk after consulting him on something, lifting Roxas’ bangs and brushing lips to his cheek and forehead as he goes. Pushing aside another image of Isa tugging Roxas into a maintenance closet, brooms and mops clattering and falling in Isa’s haste to hoist Roxas up against the door and pin him there. Button downs rumpled, buttons torn off, muscle straining against muscle, the tang of sweat, hot, heavy breaths. Axel pushes himself to focus on the present, Roxas’ face scrunching in an abrupt, jagged smile like Axel had just whispered something particularly inappropriate in his ear in the middle of a crowd. 

Roxas’ fingers curl into the hem of Isa’s tank. “God, you are not the person I thought you were.”

“Oh, I am.” Isa’s hand drifts down to twist in the silver chain dangling below the pocket of Roxas’ skinny jeans. “I’m just more than that. Though I suppose,” Isa watches Roxas’ eyes dart to Axel, sitting back, breath held, and returning to Isa again, a level of devotion he’s begun to savor the sight of, “I could say the same about you.”

Isa lifts his knees slightly, tugs at the chain on Roxas’ hip, and pulls him closer, delighting in the way the denim rubs and scrapes down his legs. 

“Well then,” Roxas tilts his head, wondering when he’d learned to tell when the slight crinkles beside Isa’s eyes were the equivalent of anyone else beaming, “here’s to learning more about each other.” 

Isa’s palm traces Roxas’ shoulder blade though he can’t see the feathers inked there, the crux of the single wing tattooed across half his back. “There’s a lot I’d like to teach you, if you’d give me,” Isa’s nails tug lightly at Roxas’ skin, “the opportunity.” 

Roxas gives the neck of Isa’s shirt a little tug and brings his face closer, dimly aware their voices have gotten quiet, “I hope you’re not talking about graphic design.”  
  
Isa’s thin lips spread into a full, genuine smile that makes Roxas’ heart pound because he’s not sure he’s ever _seen_ it before. “Only partly.” 

Roxas snorts and then gives his head an amazed little shake. “Please don’t fire me for this,” he answers, searching Isa’s patient face for another second, as fingers casually stroke his back, and then slowly bringing their lips together in a soft but certain kiss. Warm relief spills down to flood his chest like fresh, hot tea as Isa tilts his chin to accept it. Roxas’ eyes close as their lips linger, the feel of them strange yet invitingly comfortable. 

“I can’t wait to tell you guys about this when I wake up,” Axel mumbles and they can hear the smugness and the underlying actual wonder it’s smothering beneath it.

Isa and Roxas’ lips part, just barely, their eyes darting to the side to view Axel, head propped on his hand, cat eyes piercing, grin radiant. 

Roxas meets his gaze just long enough to grin back. “Happy birthday, babe.” He turns back to Isa, and ghosts their lips together for another split second in question. 

“Finally…” Isa breathes, tilting his head and catching Roxas’ mouth with his, lips pressing much more firmly. He basks in the sensation and the rush of satisfaction at his patience, his hints, his planning paying off, and more so than expected. His hand finds the back of Roxas’ neck, iron calloused fingers brushing the Roman numerals tattooed there.

Roxas’ thumb strokes Isa’s jaw and their mouths open, Isa’s tongue slipping through Roxas’ lips and enveloping his with hot slow strokes that make his breath hitch. Isa tastes like spearmint and Roxas like stale coffee and sweet chocolate, the twisting flavors intoxicatingly sweet and sharp, even as they remind them of their earlier vending machine break, grounding the dreamlike sensation with a bizarre dose of reality. 

_This is really happening,_ rings in Roxas’ head. _I’m kissing Axel’s boyfriend. I’m straddling my boss. I’m making out with Saïx—Isa?_

 _Perfect, insatiable Isa, with his muscles and his tailored suits and his endless refrains of “do it again but put some effort into it this time” wants to kiss—wants to do a lot more than kiss—_ me. 

Their lips part briefly, and Roxas inhales the heady scent of lavender again, as Isa’s withdrawing tongue flicks at the metal ring in Roxas’ lip, teasing, tasting cool, tangy metal. Roxas has always wanted to feel Isa’s statuesque looking chest at least once, and now his palm kneads Isa’s stony pec through thin fabric _—_ even firmer than he expected _—_ as he sucks Isa’s bottom lip into his mouth and nips gently. Isa’s breath stutters, his hips shifting below Roxas’. 

_“Ah.”_ Isa parts their lips, his slow, prim drawl outright teasing, a tone Roxas has only ever heard him direct toward Axel, in private, “Careful, Roxas.” There’s a light in Isa’s eyes like laughter. “That was almost hot.”

Roxas stills for a moment, and then places slow, deliberate kisses below and beside Isa’s mouth as Isa’s hand presses up his neck to ruffle soft golden blond hair. He nibbles Isa’s bottom lip again, slower, teeth lingering, watches Isa’s eyes flutter shut and murmurs, _“Almost…?”_

Somewhere to their left, Axel groans softly. 

“Almost.” Isa’s grin sharpens like he’s about to show up Marluxia in a presentation to Radiant’s infamously callous silver fox of a CEO. Then, fresh heat spiking through his veins, Isa lifts his knees, rolls his hips, and tightens his grip on the chain dangling from Roxas’ jeans. Roxas’ pelvis lands flush against his, so that every inch of Isa’s massive, thick hard-on presses firmly, gloriously between Roxas’ legs, resting just below his, leaving little to the imagination. And, not unlike when he’d received Isa’s nude photo that morning, all Roxas can think for a long, hot second is that now Isa’s just _flaunting._

Isa’s next breath shakes at the new, delicious weight, the solid, almost damp heat rubbing his cock, and then before Roxas can speak, Isa snags their lips back together. Roxas grunts in surprise as Isa’s tongue attempts to smooth out his and then again as Isa gently, experimentally rolls his hips, creating the slightest friction between their erections. 

This is more than Roxas expected, sooner than he expected it _—_ more than teasing or flirting. _But Axel seems to the exact opposite of mind, and it feels_ so good. 

Roxas shakily exhales into Isa’s mouth and then slips one of his hands to the cool, silky hair beneath Isa’s bun and eases his fingers into it, tilting Isa’s head. As their kiss deepens, Isa begins to roll his hips in a slow, steady, intoxicating rhythm, and Roxas pushes forward into it, hot sensitive skin grinding against Isa’s through thick fabric. Their breaths grow quicker in time with their heartbeats. Roxas forces himself to pull back from Isa’s kiss for a moment, gasping as Isa continues leisurely, unwaveringly rocking his oversized cock between Roxas’ legs. 

“Careful,” Roxas teases, voice thinner than he’d like, as Isa’s fingers tilt Roxas’ chin up and damp lips brush his skin in warning, “Isa, that was almost…” Teeth hover against his bare flesh. 

“Don’t taunt him, Roxas…” Axel’s own voice comes out airy and more encouraging than warning. “He’ll eat you alive.” 

“...Hot,” Roxas teases anyway. His eyes shut in anticipation that is almost immediately met as Isa’s teeth gently yank at taut skin, and just as quickly, Roxas’ eyes fly back open as the hand that had been holding him fast by the belt releases its grip and sinks between his legs, palming his length through the denim and, better making out the whole, giving him a lingering tug that sends blissful heat coursing through his veins and makes him moan an uncharacteristically high-pitched note. 

Isa’s tongue traces the imprints of his teeth before he answers, “Almost…?” and releases Roxas’ cock, though his hand lingers just above it, heavy and sure. 

To their side Isa and Roxas can hear a muffled, keening noise, feel the couch cushions shifting, followed by the swish, rustle, and snap of nylon and elastic. 

“Axel.” Roxas turns toward him, neck flushed, brows arching, setting his hand over Isa’s on his crotch though Isa clicks his tongue in reprimand. “Is this what you had in mind?”


End file.
